Flam. A type of stroke in side-drum playing. See Drum, §II, 2, and ex.3. Flamenco [cante flamenco]

1. Origin and development.

Additional theories included the suggestion that cante flamenco were Arab songs that originated in north Africa and were later adopted by flamencos of the Low Countries, or by flamenco Gypsies who arrived in Spain with Bohemian troupes. Infante took the term for a corruption of the Arabic felagmengu, similar to the Castilian campesino huido (‘fugitive peasant’), while García Barriuso believed it derived from fel-lah-mangu, or, as opined by L.A. de Vega, from felhikum or felahmen ikum (‘labourers’ or ‘songs of the labourers’). Fernández Escalante postulated that the Brahman priests (flámines) brought their sacred formulae, rites and chants to Spain from India, hence the connection between Gypsies and cante flamenco derived from the name ‘flámen’.

Despite the varied conjectures concerning its origin, consensus confines the early history and development of cante flamenco to southern Andalusia, where the Gypsies began to settle in the latter half of the 15th century. As a persecuted subculture (until 1783, when they were granted Spanish citizenship by Charles III), they developed a song repertory of a special character, the essence of which, rooted in poverty, expressed the plight of their existence and gave impetus to poetic and musical forms that had become prominent around the mid-18th century. The most notable centres for this new art were Triana (the Gypsy quarter of Seville), Cádiz and Jerez de la Frontera. Gypsy songs and dances were becoming increasingly popular at public feasts and taverns. Since bourgeois society rejected this music, its principal interpreters remained the Gypsies and rural people, whose coplas (‘stanzas’) and melodies (primarily fandangos, seguidillas, boleros and zorongos) were adopted by playwrights of one-act plays and composers of the tonadilla, entremés and sainete (popular 18th-century theatrical genres).

In its second phase, from the emancipation of the Gypsies to about 1860, cante flamenco became an important dominant musical genre in Andalusia. In the early 1840s, cante flamenco, with and without guitar accompaniment, became such a popular entertainment in the cafés cantantes (‘singing cabarets’) established in cities such as Seville (the first of which was created in 1842), Cádiz, Jerez de la Frontera and Málaga, that it spread progressively throughout the towns and villages of Andalusia. With the cafés cantantes, cante flamenco entered its third phase, which lasted well into the first decade of the 20th century. It was a period of professionalism, when even non-Gypsy performers were on the increase. While the songs of the hondo type predominated, other genres of song from Andalusia, other regions of Spain and Spanish America were introduced and ‘Gypsified’ (aflamencada) to satisfy an ever-growing public.

In the early 20th century, particularly with the first flamenco operas around 1920, much of the current repertory became theatricalized and commercialized. Even the attempt by Manuel de Falla and others to revitalize the tradition at the famous competition in Granada (1922) did not prove successful in combating this trend, which continued during and after the Spanish Civil War (1936–9). From then on the flamenco repertory continued to be ‘Gypsified’ by performers on radio and film, while other artists could not eke out a living. Notwithstanding the earlier effort by Falla, it was not until 1957 that the chair of flamencology was created at Jerez, preceded by the first reinstated competition and festival of song at Córdoba (1956). These events marked a renaissance for flamenco and the rise of a new generation of performers.

Flamenco